The 2012 Republican Primary Field: February 16, 2012

Fili and some of the best stuff is the attacks that I guess should be labled intra­party. Fire­dog lak­ers attack­ing the pres­i­dent, Paulites attack­ing San­to­ru­mists, San­to­ru­mists and Paulites attack­ing Rom­ney­il­ians. Newt­sters just attack­ing, Perry Peo­ple attacking.….…hmmmm any one not from Texas. Palin­istas and Bach­mann burg­ers attack­ing them­selves. The really odd lot are those out there that are so far into the any body but Rom­ney but nobody we have throes that they spend all of their time diss­ing any body that is actu­ally run­ning while visions of elec­toral sugar plums dance through their heads while they mum­ble about Christy, or Rubio or now Bush.
Mule man I sus­pect at some point the attacks from what is left of the left to get more pointed but at this point it would be like wast­ing your best snow­balls on the mail­man when you know the kids from the next block will be by any minute now.…nah bet­ter to keep mak­ing snow balls while one has the chance and just keep throw­ing the occa­sional mis­formd one at passers­bys to keep your arm lim­bered up and the rest of the neigh­bor­hood milling about smartly.
I have been read­ing a bunch about Rom­ney in Michi­gan. His camp seems to be get­ting a might fraz­zled. It will be inter­est­ing to see the spin should he get shelacked up there. Any fig­ures that any of you have seen on ad buys up there? Rom­ney Pac must be work­ing over time with San­to­rum attack ads. The ques­tion is though has Rom­ney already sealed the deal for Santorum?

Well Fili I guess that depends on who one asks. Let us take it from the top as I under­stand it:
Maine held or tried to hold a series of cau­cus events spread out over more than a week. It being win­ter and all and high school bas­ket ball sea­son sched­ul­ing can be at best tricky and one does not sched­ule any thing oppo­site a local high school bas­ket bll game. But Maine being Maine groups of Repub­li­cans gath­ered at Grange Halls, schools, liv­ing rooms, fire sta­tions, cof­fee shops and prob­a­bly a cou­ple of bars and restu­rants and they did the cau­cus thing. Every can­di­date was allowed to have one or more peo­ple speak for them and then those in atten­dance divvied up and were counted depend­ing on whom they sup­ported. Ok so far so good I guess. Appar­ently the Paul camp was the only one to have speak­ers at every sched­uled event and they were loaded for bear and they were in most cases care­fully cho­sen to not be the most wide eyed of the group, well prepped, neat and clean and the best the group had to offer.
Once con­ted those num­bers were relayed to either local or party county chair per­sons and those indi­vid­u­als for­warded the results to the state party appa­ra­tus where appar­ently the wheels to the process either came off due to severe inep­ti­tude or they were kicked off by an indi­vid­ual or indi­vid­u­als with a par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal axe to grind. Just to add spice at least one entire county never met because the national weather ser­vice pre­dicted a pretty good snow storm so that county was under the belief that after con­tact­ing state party higher ups that they could push off their meet­ings for one week. Then the snow storm pretty much fiz­zled out but because the word had gone out to post­pone noth­ing hap­pened. Now please under­stand this par­tic­u­lar county is where half my fam­ily comes from and they are dear dear peo­ple but they are to put it kindly a lit­tle of the beaten path. It is eas­ier to shop in New Brunswick than in Ban­gor even with the new Pass­port rules. These are real Main­ers unsul­lied by the influ­ence of states to the south (Mass) and they make Kosti Rahoma’s famous pic­ture depict­ing the inde­pen­dence of a hog on ice make sense.
So Sat­ur­day night Char­lie Web­ster got on national TV and anounced that Mitt had won by 194 peo­ple even though some places had not yet even voted. Then the actual num­bers from the var­i­ous cau­cuses were released and all hell  broke loose. What Char­lie Web­ster now describes as minor cler­i­cal errors occured enmass (appar­ently) all of which seem to have favored Mitt over errors that hurt Paul and San­to­rum and even Newt. Then it came out that Wash­ing­ton county votes that would be tal­lied this Sat­ur­day would now not be counted because they will occur after the win­dow set by the Repub­li­can party even though it appears they had party bless­ing to do so. But Wash­ing­ton county is a Paul strong­hold but Web­ster is say­ing that based on past record that there will not be enough peo­ple there to change a 194 per­son dif­fer­ence. B U T it is becom­ing increas­ingly evi­dent that the dif­fer­ence is not nor was not 194 as reported but maybe less than half of that (or as one friend has put it it is just as likely that Paul has already won with out Wash­ing­ton county but that would not fit Web­sters game plan or so it is rumored).
One county chair has put forth a cen­sure request on Web­ster, other indi­vid­ual Repub­li­cans have demanded his res­ig­na­tion or sack­ing. Web­ster now refuses to realease any cor­rec­tions or to divulge if Wash­ing­ton county results will be included until the state party meet­ing on March 10^th. Paul sup­port­ers may seek an injunc­tion forc­ing his hand, late today there are reports of death threats against Web­ster and oth­ers seen as being behind this fiasco and the State Police are inves­ti­gat­ing. Oh and Paul sup­port­ers are pulling out all the stops to pack more peo­ple than they have seen at a cau­cus in Wash­ing­ton County plus they are method­i­cally retrac­ing all the vot­ing held thus far to see just how many cler­i­cal errors there are.
If I had to make a wild ass guess it would be the fol­low­ing. Web­ster will not be allowed to stonewall until March 10^th. The party elders need to do some seri­ous dam­age con­trol and they need to do it now not in March. Web­ster could well fol­low his com­pa­tri­ots in Iowa and Nevada into early retire­ment or if he is stu­pid enough to go down Wash­ing­ton county way into an early cas­ket. His staff will prob­a­bly also get the sack, if not now by state con­ven­tion time, and Paulites that have been posi­tion­ing them­selves ever since 2008 will dis­lodge the teaper crowd that wrote the most absurd state party plat­form in the coun­try in 2010 thereby most likely caus­ing the writ­ing of the sec­ond strangest Repub­li­can Party plat­form in the states his­tory this year.
So Fili sorry for the length but our staid Maine pol­i­tics has kind of bub­bled over like an over heated batch of bean hole beans and the rest of us are bak­ing bisquits to sop up the drip­pings. Noth­ing like good polit­i­cal the­ater this time of year what with the frost heaves pop­ping up like unknown rel­a­tives at the read­ing of a rich uncles will, the high school bas­ket ball sea­son wind­ing down, mud sea­son loom­ing on the hori­zon and town meet­ings get­ting ready to start just as all the wanna beeeees are gear­ing up to run for office in Novem­ber. If noth­ing else I’m not hear­ing much talk of cabin fever for once this time of year. Damn but town meet­ing could be good this year. Hag­gling, polit­i­cal argu­ing, speechi­fy­ing, vot­ing and good eats at the sup­per put on by the grand ladies of the fireman’s Aux­il­lary. Ah late win­ter in Maine what I wouldn’t give for a fist full of blackflies.….think I’ll make a chow­der for sup­per. But then I would just be sad that Nabisco stopped mak­ing Pilot crack­ers it is a sad time we live in.

I find a local priests take on this to be telling. “I wish the higher ups in the church would for­get about abor­tion and birth con­trol long enough for peo­ple like me to get the last group of peo­ple back in the pews  they pissed off before they piss of a bunch more.” You would all like my priest friend though he does tend to drink a might much, has been known to swear and is a lousy fish­er­man all items I have seen in one day on the water. 
But hey Rick San­to­rum says his cam­paign isn’t about social issues.….….